November 18th, 2004 4:43 pmUC Berkeley Research Team Sounds 'Smoke Alarm' for Florida E-Vote Count; Irregularities may have awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to Bush in Florida

Statistical Analysis - the Sole Method for Tracking E-Voting - Shows Irregularities May Have Awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or More Excess Votes to Bush in Florida

Research Team Calls for Investigation

BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor the accuracy of e- voting - reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods - what the team says can be deemed a "smoke alarm." Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance - the probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team formally disclosed results of the study at a press conference today at the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center, where they called on Florida voting officials to investigate.

The three counties where the voting anomalies were most prevalent were also the most heavily Democratic: Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, respectively. Statistical patterns in counties that did not have e-touch voting machines predict a 28,000 vote decrease in President Bush's support in Broward County; machines tallied an increase of 51,000 votes - a net gain of 81,000 for the incumbent. President Bush should have lost 8,900 votes in Palm Beach County, but instead gained 41,000 - a difference of 49,900. He should have gained only 18,400 votes in Miami-Dade County but saw a gain of 37,000 - a difference of 19,300 votes.

"For the sake of all future elections involving electronic voting - someone must investigate and explain the statistical anomalies in Florida," says Professor Michael Hout. "We're calling on voting officials in Florida to take action."

The research team is comprised of doctoral students and faculty in the UC Berkeley sociology department, and led by Sociology Professor Michael Hout, a nationally-known expert on statistical methods and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center.

For its research, the team used multiple-regression analysis, a statistical method widely used in the social and physical sciences to distinguish the individual effects of many variables on quantitative outcomes like vote totals. This multiple-regression analysis takes into account of the following variables by county:

* number of voters* median income* Hispanic/Latino population* change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004* support for Senator Dole in the 1996 election* support for President Bush in the 2000 election* use of electronic voting or paper ballots

"No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained," said Hout. "The study shows, that a county's use of electronic voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. There is just a trivial probability of evidence like this appearing in a population where the true difference is zero - less than once in a thousand chances."

The data used in this study came from public sources including CNN.com, the 2000 US Census, and the Verified Voting Foundation. For a copy of the working paper, raw data and other information used in the study can be found at: http://ucdata.berkeley.edu.

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john maggot goat kerry judas fuck.couldn't wait to seconds to throw in the fucking towel.

i'm gonna have a field day on the phone tommorrow;"mr. chafe isn't now the time for you to call out the republicansfrom the inside? will you stand with the people of rhode islandagainst racial discrimination subjegating american voters,or will you remain silent?"

I hate Bush as much as the next peace-loving woman, but we are kidding ourselves if we think the country would be that much better under Kerry. It is too bad the Dems chickened out on nominating someone like Dean who would have shaken things up.

the fact is that this election was saturated with fraud,and the will of the people was not carried out.that's the biggest issue.

as far as better off under kerry?

rumsfeld and ashecroft were on board the vietnam architectural co-opand senior members of the clinton administration.

kerry is no fucking man of the people, but as far as womens rights, gay rights, social programs, foreign policy, enviromental, and nuclear meltdown threat?i'll take kerry and a kerry adminstrationover bush and 90% of the reagan/nixon administration anyday.

*now if you wanna talk about supporting a third party and letting the chips fall where they may (bush winning) in order to let the middle class taste injustice enough to spark change, that's one thing, but based on my findings, there is no way you can be up to date on the policies of kerry/bush and claim that their administrations would be even remotely similar.

this board doesn't have an edit option for posting! vAN DAMME. Ashecroft and Rumsfeld were senior members of the NIXON administration.

Big Bubba's name was on the tip of my brain tongue cause i was gonna say "kerry's no better than clinton carpet bombing instead of ground forcing it in order to minimize american troop casualities in bosnia".

that comment was counterproductive to point of the last post, so i decided not to go with it, but somehow i typed "clinton" where i shoulda put "NIXON".both masons. still i'd go with clinton administration over a nixon administration without battin' a fucking eyelash.

you gonna call your senators about standing with the House on the election objection on thurs?

I think the US is fucked for the next 8-12 years (4 more for Bubba and the other 4-8 for whoever takes his place, because they'll either be spending 4-8 years cleaning up the past 8 years or they'll just add to the problem the first 4 and then spend the next 4 trying to clean up 12 years of Bubba's and their shenanigans).

I forget where I was, but someone had said Bush won 4 more years. I don't agree with that. Bush didn't win either term. The first term was stolen (you can't win what you steal...theft is theft. If you win what you steal, then there wouldn't be as many thieves in jail as there are...bad analogy, I know...but the best I can come up with right now). The second term was GIVEN to him. Howso? Kerry CONCEDED the race before all counts were finalized. Regardless of the aftermath, Kerry gave up before the final count was in. He basically held out his hand and said "Here George. So what if I flip flopped, so what if people voted for me, so what if I actually stand a snowball chance in hell of winning (and still might), you can have it. Take it, I don't want it anymore." Would the outcome have been any different had he waited until everything was finished? Probably not, but the fact that he quit and gave up before it was over solidified the fact that George won by default.

Feel free to disagree and call me a bloomin' idiot...I've been called worse. (And this is probably why I don't discuss politics or religion in an open forum ... or at all).

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*The views expressed by Delrica are not that of PSi nor the Executive Council. Her gems are her own...deal with it*